Three long-time aircraft-spotters from the Netherlands show you a selection of pictures out of their personal collections. Especially featured is the memorable Republic (R) F-84F Thunderstreak / Thunderflash fighter bomber and recce aircraft.

F-104

It was raining and pouring when a group of Dutch aircraft-spotters (Hans was one of them) arrived at Wiesbaden Air Base , Germany on May 18th , 1969. The group was coming from Frankfurt-Rhein. Main AB (see other picture gallery) and intended to be present during an Armed Forces Day at this air transport and communications facility., organized by USAFE.

BEST HIT was a NATO competition in which the air forces of Italy, Greece and Turkey took part ( together with a joint “guest-team” assembled from USAFE´s 401 Tactical Fighter Wing ,Torrejon, Spain and U.S. Navy squadrons VA-15 and VA-87 , while on deployment to the aircraft carrier USS Roosevelt in the Mediterranean Sea)Read More

Eindhoven was the city where the authors both grew up and became “real” aircraft-spotters at the nearby air base. They made many pictures there throughout the years often under difficult circumstances ! This gallery contains a selection of these “blood, sweat and tears”-pics taken at Eindhoven (NL). The Eindhoven based Thunderstreaks are not in this gallery, but all in one seperate album. Note that in the 60/70ties Eindhoven AB also had a Base-Flight with Lockheed T-33’s,Harvards etc. You will find some pictures of these aircraft in this gallery.

A few images taken in more recent years are incorporated as well. Eindhoven now houses the transport fleet of the RNethAF (pics are in gallery named “KLu aircraft”).

For the first time Hans visited Leeuwarden AB (NL) as an aircraft-spotter in August 1967. In later years he came back several times. Needless to say it never was easy to picture aircraft in their landing-pattern and otherwise !

On July 23rd , 1983 Scramble Tours organized a one day return trip to what is known as the biggest Air Show event in Europe : the International Air Tattoo at RAF Greenham Common , U.K.

Hans joined the travel-group and took to the air in NLM City Hopper’s Fokker F-28 Fellowship PH-CHN for a flight from Amsterdam AP (Schiphol) to Southampton , U.K. and onwards by touring car to destination.

The 1978 Tiger Meet was held at Kleine Brogel AB (Belgium) from 19-26 June. Participating were the air arms of 10 different countries including Norway, Greece and Portugal. On 23 June KB was open to the public and on Saturday 24 June the 31 squadron ‘Tiger’ area was open to the public. Both Frank and Hans visited the event.

The Air Force Armament Museum in Florida exhibits aviation warfare armament (bombs, rockets, missiles), as well as the platforms that are being used to fire resp. drop them. In this report we of course focus on the latter: on the aircraft that the museum displays.